Abraham Beniso The Modest Cantor It is not widely known in Gibraltar, outside the Jewish community, that a Gibraltarian is one of the most highly regarded Cantors within worldwide Sephardim. This is Abraham Beniso, a man who has just celebrated the 85th anniversary of his birth and looks back on an amazing singing career as a tenor. Abraham’s voice has never broken and is as pure today as it was at the age of 20. This is a hereditary blessing and has been passed on to his son, Isaac, and incredibly to his grandsons. Abraham attended the Hebrew School in Bomb House Lane and, after passing the Cambridge examinations at the age of 16, went to work for Benaim and Company as an office boy. At the outbreak of the Second World War he tried to enlist with the Gibraltar Defence Force by adding a year to his age (unwise in Gibraltar where nothing is secret). The recruiting sergeant soon rumbled him and that was the end of his military career, but his wish to volunteer enabled him to escape being evacuated to Casablanca. When the evacuees were returned to the Rock he was reunited with his family, however his mother posed this question to the authorities — where are we going to be evacuated to next and how am I going to be able to look after my other son who is blind? The upshot was that Abraham was given permission to leave Gibraltar with his mother. The convoy they travelled in took an amazing 17 days to reach Swansea and the contingent eventually ended up in the Empress Hall, West London. It so happened there was only one other Jewish family with them which made life difficult in view of the communal cooking. Someone eventually decided all Gibraltarian Jewish families should be housed together and they were all accommodated in one block in St. James’ Avenue, West Kensington. It was a tight squeeze with four families living in each flat but at least each family had its own room. Two small synagogues were created in the building and they were visited by the Yugoslavian Rabbi, Dr Solomon Gaon, who since the 1930s had been the Rabbi to the Sephardic community at Lauderdale Road. This was how the famous Rabbi came to meet a Gibraltarian girl, Regina Hassan, who became his wife. In 1949 Dr Gaon was named Haham (Chief Rabbi) of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregations of the British Commonwealth. The young Abraham used to help in one of the synagogues and after the service would accompany the Rabbi to the bus stop. One day in 1943, having heard him sing many times, Rabbi Dr Gaon advised him to go to the Jews’ College and study for a teaching diploma and study ‘Chazanut’ which is how a cantor conducts services. It turned out Abraham never completed the course at the Jews’ College — as his fame spread he found himself singing at so many weddings and funerals it left him little time for study. In 1944 the family was sent to Northern Ireland but Abraham was there for only a month before returning to London where he sang at Lauderdale Road. He remained there for two years until his family returned to Gibraltar in 1945 (his mother went to live with her sister in Hospital Steps). At this time the Rev. Joseph Gomez de Mezquita was the Minister at Bevis Marks synagogue. (In the Jewish faith the word Reverend signifies a person who officiates at a service and is usually a cantor). When the Minister retired to return to Amsterdam, Abraham took over as cantor for two years. During his time on the Rock Abraham became engaged to Rachel Cohen. They were married in Gibraltar and went on to have a son and daughter and now are busy with six grandchildren and one great grandson. Abraham pays tribute to his wife who supported him in every possible way during his distinguished career as a cantor, which meant he has had to spend a great deal of time away from Gibraltar. In 1949 it was suggested he should perfect his singing by taking singing lessons and he went to the London College of Music where he studied under Mark Raphael who encouraged him to go for an audition at the Guildhall School of Music. He was accepted but had to wait for three months before a place became available. There, once again, fortune smiled on him and for four years he was pupil to the baritone Reinhold Gerhardt of the Vienna State Opera. In 1953 he returned to Gibraltar as the Rev. Beniso and sang at the Line Wall synagogue sometimes accompanying the official cantor. In 1955 Dr Gaon telephoned him to ask a favour — for him to fly to Johannesburg to conduct the services for the Jewish New Year and the Year of Atonement. The invitation was accepted with alacrity. (At that time it took four days to get there but when he went again six years later the journey only took 16 hours!) During this time Abraham was the secretary to the Jewish Community Managing Board, a post held for 14 years. In 1959 Rabbi Gaon asked him to return to London as the cantor was leaving. Once again he accepted by with the proviso that he flew out on a Thursday, returning on the Sunday. Since leaving London to settle in Gibraltar he has continued his Chazanut and given concerts worldwide and, as his reputation spread throughout the world, he has sung in Johannesburg, New York, Caracas, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Manchester, Cardiff, Tangier, Nice, Marbella, Lisbon and Torremolinos to mention but a few. He sang at the Sephardi Chazanut Festival in Jerusalem in 1974 and at the Tercentenary celebration of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Amsterdam in 1975. Abraham points out that he also sings on non religious occasions and recently sang with Nathan Payas at a concert at Bayside School to mark the 60th anniversary of the wartime evacuation. In 1951 he sang at the celebration to mark the 250th anniversary of the Bevis Marks Synagogue and was introduced to the Duke of Edinburgh, then in 2001 sang at the 300th anniversary and was presented to the Prince of Wales. Two years ago a service was held to mark the 350th anniversary of the resettlement of the Jews in England and as a cantor he was presented to the Prime Minister. At the reception in the Guildhall he spent some ten minutes talking to Tony Blair and made it clear that he was a Gibraltarian who was a British citizen and that Gibraltar wanted to remain British. Tony swiftly changed the subject and asked questions about the service and about the National Anthem sung in Hebrew which had been written by the late Rabbi Moses Benaim, Chief Rabbi of Gibraltar. In 1971 Abraham’s daughter, Sylvia was studying in London and asked if, before returning to settle down on the Rock, she could go to Israel to learn Hebrew. Abraham used his contacts to find the most appropriate religious kibbutz and there she met a young Israeli who spoke Spanish (which he had learned when his father was legal advisor to the Israeli Ambassador in Montevideo). The happy ending is that he became Abraham’s sonin- law when he married Sylvia in 1974. The event coincided with a concert in Jerusalem of cantors from all over the world to which he was invited to attend. They now live in Israel and have two sons, Ariel and Noam: one a musician, the other an IT consultant. Ariel specialises in classical guitar and after graduating in Israel was sent for further education in Oklahoma. At the graduation concert as an encore he sang with his grandfather, an experience repeated some time later at a concert in St. Michael’s Cave. Now, since the last official cantor died and has not been replaced, Abraham, his son Isaac, grandson and Sam Benzaquen, President of the Synagogue, take it in turn to act as cantor. Abraham’s beautiful voice is also heard around the world on a series of CDs. The first recording of Sephardi melodies was made in London in 1950 and since then a series of different albums recorded in Kol Israel, the National Library, Jerusalem, London and Manchester have been produced. His voice also features on the CD issued to mark the visit to Bevis Marks by the Prince of Wales. Two of Abraham’s close friends are Bishop Bernard Devlin and the late Dom Francis Little. On many an occasion he would walk arm in arm down Main Street with the Benedictine monk, the two of them singing Catholic hymns and latino songs. Alas this was never recorded for posterity. This is the story of a remarkably modest Gibraltarian who by the sheer quality of his voice is regarded as being one of the finest Sephardic cantors in the world. No mean achievement.

ned and Produced by JD Web Solutions